Oddball Films welcomes the Klik! Amsterdam Animation Festival on its epic West Coast tour for a screening of Midnight Madness, the strangest of the strange from their annual international animation submissions. Every year the KLIK! Amsterdam Animation Festival team receives and works through 1500+ animated shorts. There are those films that make you go, “What the flying fu¢k were these people thinking/sniffing/smoking?” And, “Where can we get some more of that good stuff?” To share this wonderful feeling of alienation, bewilderment, and delight, KLIK! and Oddball Films present you with the very weirdest the animation world has produced the last few years. If you’re brave enough to venture into a program that collects the damned, the strange, and the damned strangest from the world of animation, you’ll never look at the medium in the same way ever again... Just keep repeating: “It’s only a movie! It’s only a movie! It’s only... a movie?” Films include Feed Me Niels Dekker (the Netherlands); Boogodobiegodongo Peter Millard (United Kingdom); Pargu Sean Grounds (Canada); Baby, I Love You Faiyaz Jafri (United States); Helpiman Aisha Madu (the Netherlands); Yellow Belly End Philip Bacon (United Kingdom); Performance Masha Sedyaeva (Russian Federation); Swallowing a Single-Engine Airplane Marcelo Marão (Brazil)

Oddball Films presents The Saul Bass Treatment, an evening of films showcasing one of the 20th century’s legendary graphic designers, filmmakers and title producers - Saul Bass. The man responsible for some of the most easily recognizable corporate logos, film posters and film title sequences was–in his own right–an incredible, visionary and award-winning filmmaker. Films include documentary Bass on Titles (1982) featuring the man himself musing on the creation of some of the designer’s most iconic title sequences from such films as Man with a Golden Arm, It’s a Mad Mad Mad World, Seconds, West Side Story, Grand Prix, and Walk on the Wild Side as well as some of his most famous corporate logos. Notes on the Popular Arts (1977) explores escapism in American popular media through a smorgasbord of bizarre dream sequences; with exquisite timelapse cinematography, co-directed by his wife Elaine Bass. The pair teamed up again for the lush optical fantasy Quest (1984), an adaptation of Ray Bradbury's dystopian short story "Frost and Fire" and Saul Bass' final film. Plus, the newly unearthed short From Here to There (1964), a kaleidoscopic airplane flight across the country made for the 1964 World's Fair.

Oddball Films presentsStrange Sinema,a monthly screeningof new finds, old gems and offbeat oddities from the collection.Drawing on his archive of over 50,000 16mm
film prints, Oddball Films director Stephen Parr has compiled his 76th
program of classic, strange, offbeat and unusual films. This installment, Strange
Sinema 76: Expanded Cinema features a tour-de-force of Oddball’s
favorite short films-in a multiple projection format! Combing through the
archive for multiple prints of his favorite films, Parr will expand the cinema experience by utilizing multiple projected
overlays, tele-lenses, color filters, screen size manipulations and more. Source
prints will all be double (and triple) projected, layered and remixed live in a
one-of-a-kind multi-sensory surround cinema. The films have been chosen for their rhythmic, sensory,
animated, and multidimensional appeal and include some of Strange Sinema’s “greatest
hits” such as Frank Film (1973)
Frank Mouris’s Academy Award-winning stop-motion free-associative collage of
11,592 media images collected from magazines; A Dream of Wild Horses (1962),
Denys Colomb
Daunant’s cinematic poem featuring the wild horses of the Camargue District of
France as they roam on the beach through fire and water; Rendezvous (1976), Director
Claude LeLouche’s frenetic one take high speed dash through the streets of
Paris;Time Piece(1965), the legendary surreal and rhythmic animated short,
produced, directed, and starring M*ppet man Jim H*nson; Blind as a Bat (1956), The Moody
Institute of Science’s bat flight and echo location experiments; Cosmic
Zoom (1968) Eva Szasz’s
fantastic, “continuous” voyage utilizing the camera device of the zoom to conceptualize
the immeasurable vastness of space and the ultimate minuteness of matter; Buck
Dancer (1965) Alan Lomax’s rare mesmerizing musical and movement short
featuring Mississippi fife player/buck dancer Ed Young and the Sea Island
Singers; Pickles (1973) legendary Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto's brilliant animated montage featuring satirical and comical treatments of some
of the world’s great preoccupations: advertising, drugs, television, hunger and
more; Clay or Origin of The Species (1965)Eli Noyes’ eye-popping visual representation of Darwinism through
clay; Pas de deux (1968) Norman McLaren’s optical superimposition two
dancers become pure embodiments of light as multiplies the figures in this hauntingly
scored hypnotic and unforgettable film; Tanka (1971) optically printed Tibetan
scroll paintings create a cyclical vision of ancient gods and demons, an
animated journey through the image world of the Tibetan Book of the Dead; and No.
00173 (1966), a stark and brilliant metaphorical art film by Polish
director Jan Habarta. Plus! On
Projector #3-Time-shifted fragments from Chris Marker’s La Jeteé (1962), one of the most influential and radical time-travel
films ever made.

Oddball Films and guest curator/archivist Scotty Slade invite you to Beyond Words:The Art of Communication, a presentation of 16mm films and live poetic performances exploring the need for and the many faces of language. Although the likes of Plato and Socrates had already postulated as much, it wasn’t until the year 1964 a.d. that the wizard and media theorist Marshall McLuhan finally broke the spell the phonetic alphabet had placed on us with his famous statement, “the medium is the message.” Where we were once free-loving, non-questioning, less than consciously aware-of-its-effects-on-us users of this highly abstract form of symbolic representations of human-created phonemes, McLuhan’s words revealed that behind the curtain of written language was a powerful and potentially liberating truth. In this program of films and live verbal scores, we invite you to consider the potency of McLuhan's thoughts on language as a medium. Starting with a primordial stew, we might begin our investigation with The Language of the Bees (1965) whose linguistic flower may blossom from the very same root as our own. A brief lesson in Pictographs (1957) our very first writing system, and an utterly bizarre portrayal of Plato's Cave (1973), which will receive a live poetry score by the incredible poet Marisa Louise. Once drawn out of the depths of darkness, mime Mamako Yoneyama, will take us on a travelogue of the speaking body in Baggage(1969). Furthering the spirit of experimental language, a live performance of Dada artist, Kurt Schwitters’s, Ursonatewill serve as the live score to Hand Signals for Agriculture (1976), an elegant and comical dance of farmers and their machines. And to cap off our meditation on the written word, we're very excited to present you with a very special performance by the wonderful vocal artist, composer, and Director of FLUX (the Vocal Jazz Improvisation Ensemble at at Mills College), Molly Holm.And finally, Maya Deren’s A Study in Choreography for the Camera (1945).So come, discuss, engage, and speak with all your speaking body!

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter present Learn Your Lesson...about your Feelings: An Emotional Shockucation, the fifteenth in a series of programs highlighting the most ridiculous, insane and camptastic educational films, mental hygiene primers and TV specials of the collection. This month we're dealing with our emotions; those mighty forces of rage, pain, fear and love! A white-coater explains the basic emotions and uses the tale of angry young Jeff to explain how anger can ruin everybody's day in the mental-hygiene classic Control Your Emotions (1950). Can young Kristy McNichol change her feelings of anger to love when her new step-mother takes over her class and she's determined to take the new teacher down in the abridged ABC Afterschool Special Me and Dad's New Wife (1976). We've got a double-dose of musicalamities when Larry Klingman and the Feelings gang get little kids to sing about their icky emotions with the fearful I'm Feeling Scared (1974) and the rage-filled I'm Mad at Me (1974). Former NFL-star turned needle-point enthusiast, Rosey Grier tells you that It's Alright to Cry from that quintessential hippy-parenting guide Free to Be You and Me (1974). Kindergarteners hand-draw the story of John and his search for an escape from his pain through drugs and alcohol in A Story About Feelings (1981). And we'll examine whether those enthralling pangs of early love will lead to a happy marriage or devastation in Is This Love? (1957). Plus emotional excerpts from Help Me!: The Story of a Teenage Suicide (1970s), The Fears of Children (1951) and an interpretive dance about the metaphysical walls we construct from Walls and Walls (1973).

Oddball Films and guest curator Lynn Cursaro present A Global Childhood: The Cinema of Youth. From the marvelous to the melancholic, silly to the sublime; this program is an exploration of a whole range of youthful emotion, using scenes from world cinema classics from France, India, Japan, Spain and Canada and some of our favorite domestic educational shorts. Highlights from the enduring and beloved Pather Panchali (1955), by India’s master filmmaker Satyajit Ray, prove the wonders of childhood are universal. Being the new kid in town stinks all over the world: in Japanese director N. Terao's Skinny and Fatty (1958) this initial upset leads to a powerful and life-changing new friendship. For the troubled Canadian family of The Summer We Moved to Elm Street (1967), moving to new surroundings mean unpacking the same old troubles. There’s nothing quite as French as revolt, as les garcons of Jean Vigo’s Zero de Conduite (1933) prove in one of cinema’s greatest pillow fights. Chaos takes an sneakier form in Oddball favorite Pamela Wong’s Birthday for Grandma (1971). Plus more impish delights for the young at heart. Be there for a chat with your inner child over complimentary milk and homemade cookies!

Oddball Films invites you to join original Cockette Rumi Missabu for a screening of the compelling feature documentary Uncle Bob about the life and death of infamous Oscar streaker Robert Opel. This riveting documentary profiles performance artist Robert Opel, the man who "streaked" the Oscars in 1974 and was murdered in his homoerotic art gallery South of Market in 1979. His nephew, Robert Oppel revisits the lasting legacy and untimely passing of a cult figure who had the balls to bare it all. The film features Divine, John Waters, David Niven, Mike Douglas, Bea Arthur & Abel Ferrara with stars Rumi Missabu, Camille O'Grady, Bill Bowers, Steve Fabus & Carl Linkhart in person!Plus, Rumi will be presenting additional surprise clips from other film work/music videos as well as a few short live performances to add to the fabulousness including teasers & trailers of Tip-Toe Past the Witch from director/rocker animator Kimba Anderson & RumiNations from filmmakers Robert James & Theodore Nguyen. With amazing live performances from Rumi and friendsCarl With Records Linkhart, Mark Golamco, Shun Trenholm, Earl Alfred Paus, Diogo Zavadzki and Vinc LeVinc.

Oddball Films and guest curator Monty Cantsin present Type-Rites, a whirlwind cine-tour of typewriting: The World's Fastest Typist! The Bird That Could Type! Typewriter Percussion! And more! For one night only, we'll take in the sounds, sights, scenes (and sexual politics) of this beloved/outmoded (electro)mechanical device, by way of various nearly-forgotten artifacts of 20th Century cinema. A wide ranging program with forays into poetry, office rituals, letter-writing, and early computer technology, Monty Cantsin's live 90-minute multi-projector mix will include additional materials dug up from the Oakland-based stacks of 3TON Cinema as well as various reels on loan from San Francisco's Other Cinema. Highlights include: Type Right (1947), wherein there will be no hunt and peck; Alphabet (1966), an animated short by Oscar nominated Eliot Noyes Jr. (of Liquid Television fame, not to be confused with Eliot Noyes of 'IBM Selectric' fame); Ferlinghetti (1966), on that masked man of Chinatown; Stenographer (Girl Who Earns Her Own Living) (1914), an early Edison piece; The New Secretary (1928) a racy bit of antique French pornography set in an office; Do I Want to be a Secretary? (1954) (a valid question); What is a Word Processor? (1982), featuring John Cleese?! Plus: Stranger than Fiction; the IBM 3800; and Wing, Claw & Fang! Come early for an opening reception with special guest, local poet Zach Houston (& his trusty 1967 Hermes Rocket)!

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter presentFostering Genius: The Best of the National Film Board of Canada, with a program of exquisite and award-winning short films, animation and experimental works, all from the NFB. In honor of the 75th Anniversary of the NFB and what would have been the 100th birthday of Norman McLaren; we have this hand-picked selection of clever, hypnotic, mind-blowing, and often politically progressive work of some of the best innovators Canadian cinema has to offer. The very coolest of the cool, George Kaczender's The Game (1966) is the ultra-hip coming of age tale of teens obsessed with guns, garage rock, girls and (sun)glasses. The brilliant experimental animator and director of the National Film Board of Canada, Norman McLaren gives us two examples of his boundless wit and creativity: A Chairy Tale (1957) with a score by Ravi Shankar and Short and Suite (1960) dazzling animation painted directly onto film. From Peter Foldes, there is the eery and eye-popping early computer animation Hunger/La Faim (1973). Arthur Lipsett's experimental collage A Trip Down Memory Lane (1965) pieces together 50 years worth of newsreels and found sound to capture what he saw as the rise of a technocracy. Evelyn Lambart's delightful cut-out animation Fine Feathers (1968) features birds that trade their feathers for foliage. With more cut-out creativity from Grant Munro and Gerald Potterton in thestylish mid-century My Financial Career(1962) based on Stephen Leacock's witty essay. Come early to catch the down and dirty biopic of teen idol Paul Anka, Lonely Boy (1962) and expect extra surprises, but bring your own poutine. Everything will be screened on 16mm film from the archive.

Oddball Films and curator Kat Shuchter presentWhat the F(ilm)?! 5: Cine-insanity from the Archive an evening of some of the most bizarre, hilarious and insane films from our massive 16mm collection. In this edition, we've got clown-faced mental hygiene primers, talking horses, grandpas gone AWOL, a claymation tooth rock opera and doll parts flying everywhere! We've got the small screen oddity Mae West Meets Mister Ed (1964) in which Mae West, playing herself, asks Wilbur to come on up and redesign her stables sometime.In If Mirrors Could Speak (1976), a straight-talking looking glass gets real with a variety of young scofflaws shamed with clown-makeup. It might be in Spanish but you won't miss the meaning behind the hilarious cartoon Sex, Booze, Blues and those Pills You Use (1982). Grandpa outfits his wheelchair with a lawnmower engine and takes off around the nursing home in The Wild Goose (1973). Jesus Christ Superstar meets the California Raisins in dental hygiene rock opera The Munchers (1973). A little girl's doll gets the crash-test dummy treatment in the ridiculous Safety Belt for Susie (1962). We go under the sea for a picnic and other strange underwater activities in Aqua Frolics (1950). With musical interludes from Les Hite and his Orchestra singing Pudgy Boy (1942) and from the Three Caballeros in Di$ney's dizzying blend of live-action and animation Blame it on the Samba (1948). It's a night of celluloid psychosis too bizarre to miss!